Britain and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria

On 18 September 1931, in the middle of these three events, the Japanese army started to invade Manchuria. In the course of the Manchurian Incident, which was nothing but a war between China and Japan and lasted until the Tangku Truce in May 1933, Britain continued to show magnanimity towards Japan.

Such an attitude was based on the perception of British policymakers who thought that Japan's actions did not pose a serious threat to British imperial interests and that the Manchurian Incident could be contained as a local conflict. Japanese domination over Manchuria would rather create a situation in which Britain and Japan could coexist and co­operate in China as imperialist allies sharing common interests in keep­ing down Chinese nationalism.

What was important for Britain was to maintain its economic inter­ests in those parts in China over which it had exercised its influence as an 'informal empire'. In fact around this period there was a widespread perception about the increasing economic importance of China with its vast territory and huge population. For example, the British govern­ment established a committee to survey the future of the Chinese market under the Economic Advisory Council, an organ which was the brainchild of the Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, and put emphasis on the importance of trade with China. The report of this committee argued that 'the revival and development of the trade of China would be a factor of first importance in reviving British trade'.¹¹ A similar sort of expectation was raised by The Times a little later: 'as greater security is established and the peaceful organization of the coun­try progresses the Chinese market is seen to be almost illimitable'.¹²

In addition to such an economic consideration, the British attitude towards China and the Japanese action in China was much determined by the fact that maintaining a British position in China could be a good barometer of its worldwide prestige as a great imperial power.

The crucial problem for Britain was that its grip on this informal empire was increasingly threatened by the rise of Chinese nationalism. The December Memorandum in 1926 was a British reaction to this changing political climate in China. The Memorandum recognized the political changes in China, and admitted that existing treaties were in many respects out of date. It further argued:

The political disintegration in China has... been accompanied by the growth of a powerful Nationalist movement,... and any failure to meet this movement with sympathy and understanding would not respond to the real intentions of the Powers towards China.¹⁴

This policy orientation is in line with the overall trend of British imper­ial policy epitomized in the Indian Round Table Conference, which was dealt with in the previous section.

The British attitude towards Japan after 1931 should be considered against this background. British policymakers thought that, as long as Japanese activities did not directly infringe upon British interests in China, Japanese power could be utilized as a factor restraining Chinese nationalism. Even during the period of the Shanghai Incident in 1932, when Britain adopted a somewhat harder stance vis-à-vis Japan, Sir John Simon, the Foreign Secretary, stated in a Cabinet meeting: 'From the point of view of the security of the Settlement it appeared better that the Japanese should succeed than the Chinese'.¹⁵ It may be argued that the basic stance of Britain under the Anglo-Japanese alliance still died hard. But it should also be remembered that such sympathy with Japan was often accompanied by a feeling of racial and national superiority.

We should admit that they [the Japanese], as a great Eastern people, have every right to a line of commercial expansion in the direction of China. We should offer to cooperate with them in the Yangtse Valley and Shantung, at the same time trying to keep them from going south on the Yangtse Valley. We should realise that they are Orientals and know how to deal with the Chinese far better than we do. We are not so competent to instruct the Chinese Government how to restore order out of chaos amongst 400 million Chinese.¹⁷

From such a standpoint the worst scenario was the possible combin­ation between the forces threatening imperial rule from within and Japanese activities which could disrupt the empire from without. The tendency, especially among some Indian nationalists to look to Japan as their protector was a cause for concern among some colonial adminis­trators and the behaviour of Indian nationalists residing in Japan such as Behari Bose was constantly kept under surveillance.¹⁸

As long as Japan refrained from overtly supporting Asian nationalist movements, this kind of anxiety remained latent, but from time to time the fear about Japan's possible role in leading pan-Asiatic movements surfaced. In 1933 before leaving for India to attend the trade negoti­ations between India and Japan, Sir George Sansom, Commercial Counsellor at the British Embassy in Japan, wrote to Sir Edward Crowe of the Department of Overseas Trade:

If we seriously hamper Japan's trade expansion in other parts of the world then she will obviously try to make good her losses by action nearer home...I can imagine a very unpleasant sequence of events in the next decade, if we play into the hands of the wild men.

It is noteworthy that such a remark about Japan's relations with Asian nationalism was made by Sansom, who was a Japanese specialist well- versed in Japan's history and culture as well as in the Japanese economy and, generally speaking, took a critical stance towards overt attempts at appeasing Japan.

Britain's accommodating attitude towards Japan after 1931 was further buttressed by its doubt about the actual physical power which it could exercise in confronting Japan. Here the naval factor mattered. In the global strategy of Britain at that time the defence of the Far East was a priority and it was planned that in the event of a war with Japan the main fleet would be dispatched to the East.²⁰ However, the strengthen­ing of the Singapore naval base, which was to be the linchpin of this naval strategy, was much delayed.²¹ Under such circumstances, the British military and naval leaders and decision-makers could not help but adopt a pessimistic posture about a possible conflict with Japan. One can also add that the shadow of the Invergordon Mutiny might have been hanging over the Far Eastern scene.

It should be noted that this kind of military calculation was not the primary factor that determined British policy in east Asia during the Manchurian Incident. As has been argued above, the most crucial motive behind British magnanimity towards Japan was its desire to accommodate Japan as a partner in the project of prolonging the imperialist world order which was increasingly threatened by colonial nationalism. And this orientation became more evident in the mid- 1930s after the end of the Manchurian Incident.

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